CDAC Science at the 2020 SSAP Symposium

The Mariott Wardman Park Hotel in Northwest Washington, DC was the site of the 2020 Stewardship Sciences Academic Programs Symposium.

CDAC science was once again on prominent display at the 2020 Stewardship Science Academic Programs (SSAP) Symposium held on February 26-27 at the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel in Washington, DC. An overview of the Center and its accomplishments over the past year was presented by Steve Gramsch at the General Session on Thursday afternoon, February 27.

The highlight of the meeting was the poster session held on Wednesday evening February 26, at which all 10 CDAC students presented their research.
Graduate student Ben Brugman from Michigan State University won a Best Poster award for his work on the high pressure properties of tungsten carbide. It is noteworthy that at each of the SSAP Symposia held thus far since 2014, at least one CDAC graduate student has won a Best Poster award.

Each of the SSAP Centers and grant holders provided an update on research activities for their respective programs, and representatives from each of the NNSA laboratories were on hand to describe postdoctoral research opportunities, application procedures and the scientific environment as well as the unique research programs and facilities at each of the laboratories .

Stewardship Science Academic Programs consists of the Stewardship Sciences Academic Alliances Program, the National Laser User Facilities Program, and the High Energy Density Laboratory Plasmas Program. The complete agenda is available on the symposium website at https://www.orau.gov/ssap2020/.

Student posters presented at this year’s symposium included:

Hannah Bausch (Northwestern) – Exploring anomalous velocity structures on the Earth’s core-mantle boundary using dynamic compression

Camille Bernal (Caltech) – Effects of anharmonicity on bcc chromium

Brian Blankenau (Illinois/UIUC) – Pressure dependence of Ni₂FeGa shape memory alloys: Mechanical properties, magnetism and phonons

Ben Brugman (Michigan State) – Strength, deformation and equation of state of tungsten carbide to 66 GPa

Samantha Couper (Utah) – Interpreting two-phase deformation behavior of Earth materials using a 3D finite element method model

Matt Diamond (UC-Berkeley) – Electron density change across the Fe(II) spin transition in Earth’s mantle

Katie Hillike (Buffalo) – Shared structural motifs and bonding in new families of boron structures found using the XtalOpt evolutionary algorithm

John Hirtz (Tennessee) – Rapid oxidation of carbide materials induced by exposure to dense electronic excitation

Larry Salvati (Illinois/UIUC) – Investigation of hot-spot coalescence in polymer-bound explosives

Ryan Welch (George Washington) – Additive manufacturing and characterization of n-type bismuth telluride Be₂Te_2.7Se_0.3